As we gather around the table over the holidays, listen to the words that come out of your relatives’ mouths.

View full sizeJohn C. Whitehead, The Patriot-News/2009Downtown (dahntahn) Pittsburgh, where the Steelers (Stillers) are most popular.

More importantly — listen to how they’re pronounced.

Do you have any plans to go “dahntahn” in Pittsburgh? Or did you see Philadelphia “Meir” Michael Nutter at the holiday parade? If you’re in northern Pennsylvania, along the New York border, you may sound like you have “cawt a kindishin.”

And let’s not even get started on those uncouth Appalachians, but “rememmer” they pronounce things differently in parts of western and central Pennsylvania.

The state’s urban African-American communities also speak their own variation of the English language, which draws heavily from southern influences.

Did you go to “yuh sistuh’s” house for dinner?

Of course, if you’re from the midstate, you don’t have one of those silly accents — because you speak slightly modified Midland English or what’s probably the closest thing to General American English in the state.

Still, we’re not without our own idiosyncrasies: Whatchya doin this afternoon? Oh and the car needs repaired.

And let’s not forget our Pennsylvania Dutch friends: Do you want some “budder” with your bread? Of course, Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch isn’t strictly an English dialect — it’s actually considered a variation of West Central German.

But that’s a digression.

The bottom line is few kitchen tables can be as linguistically cluttered as a Pennsylvania table when the family comes to town.

Based solely upon pronunciation and grammar, researchers generally split the United States into a number of linguistic regions. Those regions come together in Pennsylvania — which makes the state kind of a crossroads of the English language.

Thanks in part to immigration patterns and relative geographic isolation, Pennsylvania is home to six — count’em six — distinct English dialects.

SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

When the first settlers stepped ashore in the 1600s, they brought with their own languages.

In Philadelphia, the English were the predominate group and spoke their forms of the King’s English, which mixed to a small degree with Dutch and Swedish. What they spoke became known as “Atlantic Midland” and was for a long time closely related to New England and New York English.

It wasn’t until the 1800s that the dialects really diverged, mostly because of a trend in the upper class in England to drop their “r’s.” Not to appear uneducated, New Englanders and New Yorkers followed suit.

Stubbern Philadelphians said that was “redicliss” and went their own way.

Meanwhile, to their west, the English were trying to stave off an invasion of the Germans, who settled around the midstate. At first, the Germans were befuddled — but they quickly picked up the local language and added in a few choice pieces of their own.

Over the last century or so, central Pennsylvanians fell out of love with the verb “to be” and now, when the dishes are dirty, we all know the dishes “need washed.”

Along our northern border, all that empty land attracted a smattering of New Englanders. Their accents softened over time, and became what is known as “Northern” or “North Inland” English.

Unlike most of Pennsylvania, they still pronounce “cot” and “caught” differently along the northern tier, sometimes slipping into “cawt.”

But the North Inland speakers have been losing group to the Appalachian speakers — whose language arises from the Scotts-Irish. Because of the mountainous terrain where it took root, Appalachian is considered one of the least-changed dialects in the U.S., the closest to what was originally spoken by immigrants.

But don’t confuse Appalachian with Pittsburghese — which is generally considered its own dialect. Blame it on the “still mills” and the “maahntins” that surround the city.

And the final piece of the Pennsylvania English puzzle emerged from the great migration of African Americans after the Civil War. Looking for work, thousands of southerners moved northward, bringing their language with them.

Interestingly, linguists note that African-American Vernacular English is still very similar between geographic regions — although as time goes on patterns in the urban centers are beginning to drift.

As settlers from Pennsylvania and the east coast moved west, they took their speech patterns with them. But by the time they reached California, the language had become largely homogenized.

“The west is much more linguistically uniform,” said Claudio Salvucci, an amateur linguist who has written several books on Philadelphia and Pennsylvania dialects.

“We’ve been speaking English since the 1600s, so we’ve had a long time to develop our regional differences,” he explained.

But now, fueled in part by modern communications, that tidal wave of harmonization may be moving back east.

SHIFTING AND SLIDING

Language is not a solid construct. Instead, it is an ever shifting and sliding system of communication that we generally all agree to have meaning. It’s also hard to quantify, which leads to disputes among linguists.

There’s debates over whether Pittsburghese is actually different from Appalachian and whether central Pennsylvania’s Midland English really a different dialect than Philadelphia’s Atlantic Midland.

Even dialect names are not always uniform among linguists.

But in another 50 years, it may be historians, not linguists, who have those arguments. In recent decades American English has started to become more uniform.

Television and radio, two mass mediums that rely heavily on the spoken word, have influenced the smoothing of the American linguistic landscape. So too has the propensity for geographic movement, especially among younger generations.

As people move, they bring their speech patterns with them. In most cases, it leads to a blending of language. But in some cases transplanted dialects take root and thrive.

For instance, even after 300 years the greater New York City dialect is largely confined to Long Island and parts of New Jersey. However, travel to New Orleans Ninth Ward and you may hear someone say; “I’m gonna go see my fatha out on da island.”

Of course all of that is changing.

Some dialects — especially Appalachian — carry negative connotations and are spurned by younger people. As a result, younger Pennsylvanians’ English is generally more midwestern than what may be spoken by their parents or grandparents.

To hear an area’s real dialect, find a diner where the “old-timers” gather.

George Boeree is another amateur linguist, who tracks language as a hobby. One of the modern issues he finds interesting is the shift of African American Vernacular out of the urban centers and into the suburbs.

“Today you get a strong influence from the cities because of the influence of African-American music,” he said. “Regular central Pennsylvania kids pick up different speech patterns from their favorite artists.”

Erie is an interesting example of language shifting — over the last several decades the city has undergone a dramatic linguistic change. It used to be a prime example of Northern Inland English, sharing a number of similarities with New England and the upper Midwest. But over the last several decades the city’s language has moved closer to Pittsburghese, and Erie is now considered Appalachian-speaking city.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

While phonetics and grammar make up the biggest differences among dialects, the Pennsylvania vocabulary landscape is even more cluttered.

Small wonder we can’t agree whether to privatize the state liquor store system — we’re still fighting over whether we want a soda, a pop or a coke with lunch.

And speaking of lunch, is it a hoagie, a hero, a cosmo, a submarine or a grinder?

Boeree, who hails from New York, said when he moved to the area he had a hard time ordering a meal. “When I came here and people started talking about ‘hoagies’ I had no idea what the hell they were talking about,” he said. “There were a lot of things I had never heard before I came to central Pennsylvania.”

There are, he said, a number of dialects converging in Cumberland County. That leads to the use of multiple words for the same figure of speech — you’ins, youse, you-guys; etc.

It also doesn’t help that Harrisburg is the state capitol, which draws dialects into from the various regions of the state.

“It’s fun to listen to people,” he said.

Now retired from Shippensburg University where he taught psychology, Boeree spends his time working with languages as a hobby.

He’s developing and tinkering with his own international language, Lingua Franca Nova, which he described as a combination of romance languages with a creole-style grammar.

“It keeps me off the street,” he said with a laugh. “An unemployed psychologist is a dangerous thing.”

So the next time you sit down with your family and friends, listen to the speech patterns coming out of their mouths. Chances are, they’ll be a smattering of English dialects being spoken around the table.

Anyway, enjoy your week, and thanks for reading awhile.

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